Experiments Show That Simply Imagining Fictitious Childhood Events Sometimes Makes People Believe They Experienced Them

The power of human imagination may be stronger than
previously suspected, blurring the line between memory and
imagination, a University of Washington psychologist reported today at
the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science.

"One simple act of imagining a fictitious childhood event
increased people's confidence that the event happened to them," said
Elizabeth Loftus, a UW professor of psychology, who discussed the
results of a series of new studies that explored memory and
imagination.

"We call this phenomenon 'imagination inflation' and the
implications of the mind being so malleable are enormous."

She also pointed to a new direction in memory research,
exploring whether the power of imagination can be used to aid people
in adopting beneficial health habits.

Loftus, a leading memory researcher and central participant in
the debate over repressed memory, was part of a news briefing panel on
"Memory in a Complex World." Other panel members were Henry
Roediger, chairman of the psychology department at Washington
University in St. Louis, and Eric Eich, an associate professor of
psychology at the University of British Columbia.

To explore what happens to human memory when people
imagine events that did not occur, Loftus and other researchers
conducted a series of related studies. In the initial study, subjects were
given a written list of 40 possible childhood events and asked about the
likelihood that these events happened to them on a scale of responses
ranging from definitely did not happen to definitely did happen.

Two weeks later, the subjects were asked to imagine they had
experienced some of these events, ones they had identified as not
occurring. These events included falling and breaking a window with
their hand, getting in trouble for calling 911, finding a $10 bill in a
parking lot or being pulled out of the water by a lifeguard. Not all of
the subjects were asked to imagine the same events.

In a typical one-minute exercise, subjects were told to picture it
was after school and they were playing in the house when they heard a
strange noise outside. They were told they ran toward the window,
tripped, fell, reached out and broke a window with their hand. While
imagining the situation, the subjects were asked several questions, such
as what caused them to trip, what did they feel and what did they do
after realizing they were cut. After imagining several situations, the
subjects again were given the list of 40 childhood events to fill out.

Comparing the answers from the two lists, Loftus and her
colleagues found that a one-minute act of imagination led a significant
minority of subjects to say an event was more likely to have happened
after previously identifying it as unlikely to have occurred. In the
broken window scenario, 24 percent of the subjects who imagined the
event showed an increase in confidence that the event had actually
happened. For those subjects who did not imagine breaking the
window, 12 percent showed a corresponding increase.

Across the eight events that some subjects were asked to
imagine, the researchers found that there was more positive change in
imagined scenarios, 34 percent, than in non-imagined ones, 25 percent.

Loftus said there are several possible explanations for this
"imagination inflation" or why imagining an event led some people to
change their minds about the likelihood of a fictitious event actually
having happened. One reason might be that an act of imagination
might remind some subjects of a true experience. Another and more
likely explanation, she said, is that an act of imagination simply made an
event more familiar when the second assessment was made and that
familiarity was mistakenly related to childhood memories, rather than
the act of imagination.

Several subsequent studies replicated the original findings and
also found that people with memory or attention lapses are more likely
to engage in imagination inflation. In addition, memory inflation also
occurs when subjects imagine something happening to other people,
but the effect is strongest when they imagine themselves in a
situation.

"Imagination about the self leads to more distortion than
imagination involving others. But there are situations, such as people
sharing their experience in Veteran's Administration group therapy
sessions for example, where there may be some people who tend to
absorb and take in other peoples' stories as their own and believe they
happened to them," Loftus said.

In a look at a new direction for her research, Loftus said "A big
question for the future is can we harness the power of imagination to
help people lead healthier lives."

She said this work would examine the possibility of engaging
people's minds to imagine practices widely recommended by the
medical community -- such as eating more fruits and vegetables or
flossing your teeth twice a day -- as a technique for promoting activities
and having people adopt them as habits.

Loftus' collaborators in the imagination inflation studies
included Charles Manning and Marcos Nunes-Ueno, doctoral
candidates in psychology at the University of Washington; Maryanne
Garry, a former UW post-doctoral researcher and now assistant
professor of psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New
Zealand; and John Paddock, an Atlanta clinical psychologist.

###

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.